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How did Walt Whitman use lists of places and people in his poetry?

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“Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos” — Walt Whitman American poet Walt Whitman, photograph by Mathew Brady.

Walt Whitman utilized lists—often referred to as catalogs—as a central stylistic device in his free verse poetry to capture the vastness and diversity of the American experience.12

Rather than relying on traditional rhyme or meter, Whitman employed an enumerative style characterized by oratorical rhythms and chanted lists of American place-names, objects, and individuals. These catalogs served several key functions in his work:12

Creating Empathy: By listing diverse people, locations, and actions, Whitman successfully created a sense of space and movement, allowing readers to connect with the breadth of the nation.1
Reflecting National Identity: These lists were a response to the nationalistic desire for a literature commensurate with the scale and natural resources of the North American continent.1
Expressing Universality: The catalogs allowed the poetic "I" to transcend time and space, binding the past to the present and asserting a mythical vitality that celebrated the interconnectedness of all things.12

While some contemporaries dismissed this technique as unpoetic, it became a hallmark of his revolutionary approach to poetry.12